Beginner’s Mind

The Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said that the beginner’s mind holds many possibilities, and the expert’s few. A beginner looks because nothing is yet settled. An expert often stops looking, since the answer seems already known.

Expertise is useful, but it comes with a cost. We see the pattern we expect and pass over the detail that does not fit. The kettle is “just the kettle,” the commute “just the commute,” and life goes by unobserved.

Beginner’s mind is a practice of taking the stance of not knowing on purpose. You drop the label for a moment and look at what is there. It does not mean throwing away skill. It means keeping your skill open to correction.

Jo and the kettle

Jo has made tea every morning for twenty years. Lately she does it half asleep, and once let the kettle boil dry without noticing.

One day she tries to make it as if she were a guest in someone else’s kitchen: she watches the steam, feels the weight of the cup, hears the water change its sound. The tea is the same, and she notices, for the first time in years, that it tastes of something.

Try this today Pick one thing you do daily, and for five minutes do it as if you had never done it before.